1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and method which identify and extract an area having preliminarily-set height information from acquired images.
2. Related Art
In manufacturing scenes, automatization has been advanced, in view of power saving and higher efficiency. In order to realize the automatization, a number of sensors have been employed. Among such sensors, there have been frequently employed image sensors capable of photographing works (target objects to be inspected) and processing the images resulted from the photographing, in order to perform inspections of defects in these works.
Many image sensors are constituted by a photographing portion for photographing works and an image processing portion for processing the images resulted from photographing and are adapted to perform determination as to whether or not the images resulted from photographing include an area having a predetermined shape, and the like. As work detect inspections using such image processing, there are inspections for defects in works placed on pallets. Conventionally, works have been stopped at the same position in the field of view of a camera as a photographing portion, during transferring the works on a manufacture line. In order to detect work images from images resulted from the photographing, a measurement area is provided at a predetermined position in the field of view, and the size of the measurement area is set to be coincident with the size of works. The positional deviations of works in the images resulted from the photographing are corrected such that they are coincident with the measurement area and, thereafter, an inspection processing is started. The correction of their positional deviations is attained by applying searching and edge processing to the images resulted from the photographing.
As other methods for detecting work images from images created by photographing, there has been suggested processing for cutting backgrounds using color information. As an example of this processing, the present applicant has suggested a technique described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2008-15706. This technique is capable of extracting only work images (cutting backgrounds) from images created by photographing, using color information about works.